I started using Craigslist in the late 1990's before it got 'popular'; some dates, got an apt, sold a few things, bought a few. The big www thing was slowing muscling in on newspaper classified turf but not enough of a threat. There was a sense of community like the Well or BBS dialup days of olde; people trusted it. I think people value routine and endurance and CL was/is? seen as a place to community exchange. The heavy text based simple Web 0.5 UI hasn't changed much since then and yet users still come like people still use vi or emacs. They all drank the koolaid! 20 yrs later, I hear all this talk of data/API entitlement and efficiency is the new Winning! I don't get it? If CL is so lame and inefficient why can't these smart young whippersnappers replicate such a model of community BBS? Grow/Roll your own, collect your own data as the article suggests. FFS, there is no monopoly in the hood. There is some natural selection out thar in the intertubes.
Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.
161–170 of 176 posts
Re: Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
You make the mistake of assuming that you gave them your data and got nothing in return. You did. What you're upset about is that you've already given them your data, and now you want more for it. You've upped your price after handing over the product, and them having delivered the product.
What about the posts I put on Craigslist in the future? The ratings I give to Netflix? Am I somehow mystically bound to never ask for more in return for the data I provide them? Of course we can ask to change the terms. It's a business transaction.
sigh
This is silly, and you probably think you are being smart.
That's not what's being argued. Read the parent comment, and there is an expectation that it's your data and you have the right to decide what to do with it, and that you essentially should be able to dictate to other companies how they have to share it.
I call bullshit.
> What about the posts I put on Craigslist in the future?
What about them? T&C. It's your data. You are choosing to give it to Craigslist.
> The ratings I give to Netflix?
What about them? Those are your rating? You are choosing to give it to Netflix so Netflix can give you better recommendations.
> Am I somehow mystically bound to never ask for more in return for the data I provide them?
That was never suggested. Nor is it what is happening here. People are acting self-entitled, demanding that their data, which they given to other companies, somehow is still theres by some non-existent right.
> Of course we can ask to change the terms. It's a business transaction.
Which has nothing to do with what's being discussed here.
Here, let me help explain: if you sign up and agree to use a site, and provide it with data, then the business relationship already exists. If you suddenly want more, you need to renegotiate. But that doesn't mean the company should be required to hand over that data (which is what many are suggesting) that they own (and just because it's about you, or you provided it, doesn't mean it's yours to control).
So yeah, you can ask them to change the terms. And when they don't, you stop using the service.
I swear, this is like reading a bunch of posts my self-entitled, egotistical nobodies who, in all truth, never really cared about their data in the first place.
After all, if you did, this wouldn't be a problem for you.
Re: Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.
#163I've been mulling over few solutions for craigslist problem and there are few technical solutions to flaunt craiglist's service. I am building service along similar lines of what padmapper did and already writing up those for our service.
Moral is if you quit, you are a quitter. If you are useful to people find some other solution implement it asap and keep rolling. I am not yet living in the sates but if I truly believe that my service is useful to people I'd just go and try to do it differently and move on with that. Never give up, especially if you are doing something that is good. If you're causing rucks and are being useful maybe that might be an opportunity of a lifetime...
my 2c
Re: Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.
#164All the mentioned companies form at least part of their business on data collected from their users. Not products or sevices formed of raw material. Even Netflix depends on its users' data heavily in order to run its recommendation system. So to expect that they allow the public, in the form of other companies providing other services based on said data, is not so unreasonable at all. As a provider of data from which…
You make the mistake of assuming that you gave them your data and got nothing in return. You did. What you're upset about is that you've already given them your data, and now you want more for it. You've upped your price after handing over the product, and them having delivered the product.
Please point to the part of my comment where I said I got nothing in return. I'm not sure what makes you think that customers can't demand things of those they do business with. There's always a potential new competitor, and I can always choose to take my business elsewhere. Also, who's saying I've upped my price? This all started because of narrowing of restrictions on APIs, not people suddenly demanding APIs where none existed.
Re: Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about the posts I put on Craigslist in the future? The ratings I give to Netflix? Am I somehow mystically bound to never ask for more in return for the data I provide them? Of course we can ask to change the terms. It's a business transaction.
sigh This is silly, and you probably think you are being smart. That's not what's being argued. Read the parent comment, and there is an expectation that it's your data and you have the right to decide what to do with it, and that you essentially should be able to dictate to other companies how they have to share it. I call bullshit. > What about the posts I put on Craigslist in the future? What about them? T&C. It's…
Condescension doesn't make your point any more valid that it would be otherwise. You'll actually find people take you more seriously without it.
What I'm reacting to is this idea that things are the way they are and they can't change. That the companies have the sole power to set the terms for what they do with data provided to them by their users. And of course they don't. It's an exchange, and if the users, as a group, want to ask to change those terms, they are completely withing their rights to do so.
There's nothing self-entitled or egotistical about that. It's simple business to request the terms of an exchange be changed.
Re: Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.
#166The argument (like all "nobody is entitled" arguments) is self-defeating. If others are not to whine about X, what validates the author's whining about such others? What the author offers is an explanation of why corporations offer and revoke features like APIs. I think that is fairly well understood. That does not answer why others should not complain when that happens ("such is the world" is not an answer). It is a…
It is important be wary of the foundation you build your business on. If you are building the core of your businesses around another company's API service you should be prepared to offer concrete value to that service's users in a way that doesn't directly compete with the main service, or do anything to directly or indirectly promote their competitors.
And, if you go against that approach you shouldn't be surprised or indignant when you get shut down. You will have a much better chance building a truly complimentary product, rather then rallying users to boycott a service or demand changes in policy.
To me it's sort of like someone who always drives over the speed limit by at least 50mph, and one day they finally get pulled over and are given a ticket. But, because they were never 'caught' before, they just feel like they were entitled to always drive that fast, and instead of just paying the ticket, they try to get the speed limit laws changed, or to have a judge throw out their ticket and let them keep driving however they want.
When you use another company's API, you are driving on someone else's road, and for better of worse you need to play by their rules.
So if you want to drive fast with no consequences, build your own road. And if your interested in 'exploiting' or piggybacking on someone else infrastructure, don't do something to call too much attention to your self.
PadMapper - started providing other listings that were not from craigslist. GoodFilms - providing information and data to other movies services besides netflix Pealk - were undercutting the price point for LinkedIN premium features.
Re: Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Save it for econ class. A company's goal is to build a sustainable profit generating engine. To allow this, it needs to play a constructive part in the marketplace and community.
A company does not need to provide a constructive part of the community to achieve their goal of profitability... they just have to provide something that some segment of the population is willing to pay for, or build in a degree of lock-in that guarantees continued profits. For example, It's probably fair to say that Monsanto is not a constructive part of the marketplace and community, but they sure do have a sustai…
You could take tabaco companies, much of alcohol, gambling, TV and other addictive "entertainments", and to the extend that they are enterprises (if not legal), much of the arms trade, mafia / organized crime, illegal drugs trade, and modern banking, as not providing net social benefits. While generating profits.
Re: Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
What Craigslist has is what economists call "positive network externalities" or network effects. Which just means that it's a really valuable service because tons of other people use it . Buyers go there because lots of people are selling, and lots of people selling go there because they know lots of buyers visit the site.
So, what are we supposed to do? Seems like the only options are: A) destroy the network effect with legislation. (How is this good?) B) select another company The Board feels has a better platform, crush CL with legislation, and establish the new company with legislation. (How is this good!?!)
The solution suggested in "Crossing the Chasm" is not a frontal assault, but to completely dominate a niche. A frontal assault is impossible, and no one ever succeeds. Microsoft did something that IBM didn't care too much about initially. Google started out doing something that was tangential for Microsoft. Facebook did not go head to head with ads and search with Google initially either.
Re: Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.
#169By the same coin, we owe Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others nothing.
That's a two-way street.
As crazygringo pointed out, a very large part of the value of these firms comes not from their technology but simply from their market position, dominating a specific niche, and generating network effects as a consequence of size.
In a market in which there's a tendency toward monopoly: utility services, telecommunications, desktop/personal software, business office software, business systems software, advertising networks, publishing, broadcasting, pop music/entertainment, agricultural middleman, major chip foundries, pharmaceuticals, a large part of the value accruing to the firm/organization is a consequence of the interest / business which society as a whole has invested in the monopoly.
At the same time, twin abuses of monopoly pricing (which accrues a greater marginal profit to the monopolist) or anti-competitive actions (driving out competition by way of locally (time or region) undercutting prices, contractually discouraging or prohibiting customers from doing business with competitors) exacts an additional cost on society as a whole.
I've long been a fan of Craigslist. I think that their business exemplifies some of the best of how to conduct an online business (leverage technology massively, but also rely on community goodwill to conduct many business operations, including removing of bad/fraudulent listings). While I'm not a particular critic of CL's page format -- they've held to the KISS principle in the extreme -- it's become increasingly clear that for many types of listings, there are some very evident improvements which could be made.
My feeling is that CL are squandering an opportunity in their dealings with Padmapper. The Padmapper interface, for apartment and real-estate listings, is vastly superior to CL's existing listing format. While there is a business risk to CL in allowing another party to utilize its comprehensive listings (for which CL would reasonably be able to assert compilation copyrights, answering some here), I really believe it would be to CL's benefit to find a reasonable business relationship under which it could utilized Padmapper's interface. Whether that's a data exchange agreement, a purchase or leasing of the technology, or simply a reinvention of it, I don't particularly care (I also owe Padmapper nothing in particular).
And if that's not the case, then, well, CL show a case of a market which, if a feasible business case can be made, is ripe for disruption.
Re: Craigslist, LinkedIn, Netflix, and others don't owe us anything.
#170Some pathology of codependency is based on people doing for someone else what that someone else should do for themselves.
This is also how one destroys markets. Say for example dumping cheap corn on markets to destroy the livelihood of local famers, then when they are gone jacking up the prices far above what would have been possible when the local farmers were still operating. This and other monopolistic practices are illegal and generally accepted to be morally reprehensible in most of the world.
There is a implicit deal that is being struck between suppliers and consumers. That what we get today we can get tomorrow. TQM style supply contracts often call this out explicitly building long term positive relationships between supplier and consumer. Unilaterally changing the deal is bad for buisnes by leaveing the overall environment unable to reliably plan or predict future actions.